A Toddler's Life: Becoming a Person / Edition 1

by Marilyn Shatz

Overview

What sets humans apart from other social animals? In an intimate account of child's development from age one to three, distinguished psychologist Marilyn Shatz answers this question by arguing that humans are unique in their ability to reflect on themselves, to compare themselves to others, and to self-correct. Language plays a central role in such processes because it offers the developing child a powerful tool for going beyond immediate experience to an understanding of unobservable states and motivations. In addition to her two decades of research in developmental psychology, Shatz draws on observations of her grandson Ricky to show how toddlers use their cognitive, social, and linguistic skills to understand and eventually to employ language as a means for successfully engaging others. Shatz expertly brings the dialogue of the toddler to life, plotting the turning points in Ricky's progress from fifteen-month-old one-word speaker to three-year-old articulate preschooler. The story of a child's increasingly sophisticated involvement with an expanding world is here generalized to other young children and skillfully interwoven with both empirical research and insightful commentary about the nature of human learning in a social setting. Parents, teachers, researchers, and students of developmental psychology and psycholinguistics will find this book to be an interesting and engaging study of early developmental processes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195099232
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/23/1995
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	9.19(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.63(d)
Lexile:	1230L (what's this?)

About the Author

University of Michigan

Table of Contents

Preface1. Introduction2. Age 15-16 Months: Doing a Lot with a Little3. Age 17-18 Months: Just One of the Family4. Age 19-20 Months: Emerging Skills5. Age 21-22 Months: Self Concept and Object Concepts6. Age 23-24 Months: Consequences of Self-Awareness7. Age 25-26 Months: Two-year-old Talk8. Age 27-28 Months: Talking About People and Talk9. Age 29-30 Months: Gaining Control over a Complex World10. Age 31-32 Months: Preparing for Second Order Thinking11. Age 33-34 Months: The Emergent Preschooler12. Age 35-36 Months: Preschooler Paradoxes13. The Path from Infancy to ChildhoodEpilogueReferences

Editorial Reviews

"The author is at once a well-known researcher in the areas of children's cognitive and linguistic development, a skillful, sensitive observer of children's behavior, and an excellent writer who shows in this book that she can communicate as effectively to lay readers as to her fellow professionals." —John H. Flavell, Stanford University

"Charming and thought-provoking...." —Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago

From the Publisher